by Everly Frost
Tugging on the reins, I led him across the grass, closer, until I breathed in the thick, moist air, the scent of damp foliage and mushy earth. Creeping vines tangled through branches and twisted down trunks; some rotted and torn, others standing tall.
I hadn’t been this close to the woods for a long time. My hand went to my throat as I observed the strangled branches, remembering a single moment in time, something so vague it was slippery...
I sensed her. The other me. She dug up the memory, throwing it out at me; the forgotten moment that threatened to crack me into pieces.
Behind the branches, the light receded into darkness.
It sucked me in with it, into rustling leaves and creeping vines, ropes that wound around my ankles. Vines that wrapped around my neck. The vines pulled me upward, so slowly that my last breaths wheezed out of my mouth. One breath. Two. Only my pointed toe kept me high enough that the air crept into my lungs.
I was frozen. My feet merged with the ground. I didn’t want this. I wouldn’t remember.
I tried to wrestle myself free of the images, the sensations running the width and height of my body, but she kept me frozen and bending to her will as though it were her own hands twisted around my throat. Pulling tighter.
Strangling me dead, like I was before.
Chapter 2
I REFUSED TO remember the night I died in these woods.
Wrenching free of her with a cry, I snatched up the nearest fallen branch. It crumbled in my hand and little spiders scurried out. Jumping back, away from the bush, I slapped and thumped at my sleeve until I was rid of the little critters.
I bruised myself with my thrashing, but I didn’t care. Panting, I spied a broken branch dangling from a tree: a thick enough stick, dropped and wobbling in the breeze. It would have to do as a makeshift spade. I jerked it away and carried it with me.
Cloud followed me at a slow gait and I pulled him faster, back into clear ground, back to where I could breathe, away from the dark place.
I ran to the spot where the snake was and threw myself to the ground, ramming the stick into the earth until grass flew and a hole appeared. Leveraging the stick under the snake, I shoved and poked it into the earth and threw dirt over it, stomping my foot as hard as I could to flatten the mound.
Dust and dirt cloaked my hands and calves, but I’d done what I needed to. Throwing myself onto Cloud’s bare back, I didn’t think about riding any more. I just wanted to go home.
I turned Cloud around, urging him into a gallop across the expansive flat land, slowing down when we reached the rise of the hill. I rode carefully past the dam. Then we sped up another rise and across to the stables, where Jack, the stable master, hefted bales of hay.
He called out to me and dropped the bale. “Slow down, Caroline. You’ll lose a shoe going that fast in here.”
I pulled Cloud to a stop as his hooves clattered on the stone path, feeling guilty for forgetting his welfare in my rush to get away from the woods. “Sorry, Jack.”
He gave me a grin, but it didn’t reach his eyes. He took Cloud’s bridle in weather-beaten hands. “I can brush him down for you.”
I slid to the ground, scowling. “Jack, you know I don’t need your help with my horse.”
“Yeah, I do.” He gave me a warning look. “But I think you’d better head up to the house as quick as you can.”
I tipped my head and my loose hair slid across my back. The swirling feeling of dread in my stomach got worse. “What’s going on?”
“Don’t know, but Edith rushed back from town a few minutes ago. Left the truck in the middle of the yard.” He gestured at the SUV parked at an awkward angle. “Ran inside like a thousand demons were after her.”
I chewed my lip. If my eldest sister wasn’t happy, then we all ended up unhappy. “Thanks, Jack. Uh, can you clean his hooves? We met a snake out there.”
Under any other circumstances, that comment would have earned me a grilling. I wanted it to. There was a part of me that wanted to tell someone about the strange snake. If only I could tell him about the other me, too, but that was something I would never do.
Jack had worked for my father since before my mother died. I’d known him all my life, and he never failed to take an interest in what happened to the horses—or me. But this time he took the reins with a nod and led Cloud away.
Putting the snake and the vines and the cold me as far into the back of my mind as I could, I scrambled up to the house, clomping across the dirt path and up the wooden stairs to the back door. I made my way through the hallway.
Then I paused, drenched in the silence pouring from the kitchen. Venturing toward it, I pushed on the door, brushing a loose chip of paint off my hand as I peered inside. Most of the inside of our house needed repainting. In fact, the outside did too, all of it was chipped and peeling.
Edith sat with her back to me, her patched coat folded neatly on her lap, a few threads from the rough edges of her jeans drooping to the floor. She clenched a piece of paper in her hand.
Timothy and my other sister, Rebecca, occupied themselves opposite her. Timothy leaned against the kitchen table, munching on an apple. One of his dirty feet scuffed the wooden floor—the nonchalant pose he assumed when there was trouble.
Rebecca pushed the iron over the sleeves of Dad’s good white shirt. She glanced at me and mouthed “boots.” Then she huffed at Edith and continued ironing.
I hurried to slip off my dirty riding boots before Edith saw them.
Edith caught me with a frosty look. She slapped her hand onto her lap. “Her flight’s today. There’s no stopping her now.”
I froze in mid-stride. “Who?”
Rebecca dropped the iron onto its metal plate. “What are we going to do? This house is a mess. There are piles of washing, piles of dishes, piles of dust, piles of… of work.” She was wild eyed. “And we’re receiving a visit from our long-lost English aunty.”
“Who probably has piles.” Timothy waggled an eyebrow.
It looked like Rebecca was going to thump him. Then her hand flew to her mouth to stifle a giggle.
Edith growled at them and Rebecca straightened herself, retrieving the strap of her apron. She adjusted the iron’s heat dial and smiled sweetly at Edith.
I frowned. “When will she arrive?”
“According to this letter?” Edith held it up in her fist as though she wanted to crush it. “Her flight lands in over twenty-four hours and she’ll arrive by train on Tuesday.”
I frowned at the flimsy, flowery paper but Timothy laughed, flicking his hair out of his eyes. “Dad’s not going to like this.”
Not easily provoked, Edith read aloud from the letter. “She writes: ‘It’s high time I met my nieces and nephews and paid my regards to you, dear Harry. I have longed for many years to get to know my sister’s children and I regret the circumstances that have prevented me from doing so. As grueling as the flight may be, I am now determined to commit to it.’”
Our mother’s sister was about to invade our lives. I’d never met her. None of us had. As far as I knew she’d never left England to visit my parents. Not once.
Timothy mumbled. “Why can’t she pay her regards in writing? And who writes letters these days anyway?”
Rebecca rolled her eyes. “People who want to contact other people who don’t have an Internet connection. Which would be us.”
Edith ignored them as her jaw ticked. “We don’t have any choice about it.”
I sensed her frustration reflected on my own face. My life wasn’t perfect—far from it—but at least it was predicable. The thought of a stranger coming to our home made my hands clammy with fear of the unknown, but that wasn’t all I felt. Something cold, something expectant twisted inside my chest. At first I thought the feeling was mine, part of my anxiety, but it wasn’t. It belonged to the other me and it welled inside me like a great torrent.
I gritted my teeth and squashed down on her as hard as I could, focusing instead on the cut of Edith’s
jaw, the twitching muscle next to her ear.
“It’s not that I don’t want to meet her.” Rebecca’s expression turned to shame as she pulled another shirt from the washing basket. “But what are we going to do with a guest? What is she going to do here?”
Timothy shrugged. “Washing? Baking? Maybe she’ll wrestle that grumpy, old bull that keeps charging me.” Timothy’s comment earned another glare from Edith. He threw his hands into the air. “Nobody’s ever visited us before.”
“Everything will have to be cleaned. Linen washed, bedding aired, furniture polished, floors mopped, and the entire house tidied, all within the next week.” Edith ticked the chores off on her fingertips and allotted each of us our workload.
“Wait a minute, where’s Sam? Shouldn’t he do something as well?” Timothy pushed the hair out of his face and stared right back at Edith.
“Samuel is outside and yes, he will be helping.”
She continued listing off the chores until she wore a satisfied smile on her thin lips. “I think that should do it.”
The next day, a shout brought me running in time to see Rebecca stomp her foot and wallop Timothy’s arm.
“Look what you’ve done.” She pointed at the debris and the hollow bodies of long-dead insects littering the floor.
He waved a dirty cloth in her face. “I’m supposed to dust the furniture.”
“Not after I’ve mopped the floor, you idiot.”
“Well, then, we need a system. So, I dust the furniture before you mop the floor, all right? You’d better tell me when you’re about to mop, okay?”
Rebecca scowled. “All right. But don’t you clean anything without checking with me, first.”
He pursed his lips. “Actually, I think you should be the one to check with me—”
She threatened him with her fist. “Or I will do you physical harm.”
“Okay, okay.” He backed off and took the dirty rag with him. But he shouted back at us. “Where’s Samuel, I’d like to know? I can’t brave women with mops all on my own. Rather be facing an angry bull than this…” His voice faded down the hall.
“At least you didn’t meet a spider and her babies,” I said, but Rebecca wasn’t impressed. She glared at me before she went to fetch the broom.
My foray into derelict cupboards turned up any number of skeletal rodents. I took to wearing thick gloves after the encounter with the spider. At least I didn’t come across any more snakes, which had been known to lurk in dark corners in the lower level of our home. As I cleaned, I worked my way upstairs, across the landing, through the bedrooms and finally, I hovered outside Dad’s bedroom.
That’s where I stopped.
I rarely ever approached the door to his room, let alone went inside.
When I was five years old, only a short while before my mother died, I remembered running along the hallway with little Samuel. He’d just started walking and I was so intent on his wobbly steps that I didn’t watch where I was going. I got the doors mixed up and found myself staring into my father’s room—and beyond. To the blue room that was my mother’s.
I remembered shades of sapphire, a slash of sunlight pouring in from the other side of the house, and a figure on the far bed. Her back was to me.
I clung to the image of her delicate shoulders, her long, black-as-night hair brushing her waist. I savored the rare sight of her, imagined her turning, opening her arms, welcoming me into them.
I’d waited, standing there in the doorway, hoping that she would look at me. Just once.
Now, I raised my hand to knock on Dad’s door, but my other arm—the one over which I’d hung the bucket of water—shook so hard that the water sloshed onto the floor. All I could do was back away, one step at a time.
I jumped and whirled as I bumped into someone behind me.
A wave of water splashed across the wall and Edith cursed at me, stomping the foot I’d stepped on. “Caroline!”
“Sorry.”
I backed up and she pressed her lips together. She gave her foot a final clomp before she waved at Dad’s door in exasperation. “Aren’t you going to clean in there?”
Her face wore an expression that I couldn’t decipher.
A twist to her lips. A tilt to her head.
Maybe it was because her foot still smarted, but then her hand—the one she’d waved—descended to lightly graze my arm. I was surprised to realize that it was the first time she’d touched me in a very long time.
I blinked at her. I lied. “I need to get clean water first.”
“Well, don’t be long. Alice gets here tomorrow.”
Edith floated across the hall and closed the door to her room. I stared at the green splash on the wall next to her door where an older layer of paint showed through.
When I turned back to my father’s room, the doorway blurred and expanded in my eyes. Dizziness threatened to swamp me. Behind the door, I sensed the blue room burning in sunlight and my mother’s image burning with it.
I couldn’t go in, couldn’t make my feet move.
I didn’t remember her and I wouldn’t go into the blue room—her room—the room where she died.
I had no memory of her face. I must have seen it when I was a baby but not since. I knew nothing of what she wanted or dreamed. Nothing.
Except that she died in this room when I was five years old, and her name was Meredith Caroline Rayburn, and on the night she died I stumbled out into the woods and tried to kill myself.
Chapter 3
ON TUESDAY AFTERNOON, I poked my head out of the window as Timothy ran toward the house, waving his arms and tripping up the veranda steps.
He said, “She’s here.”
Without speaking, we filed onto the front porch and waited as the moving speck drew closer. A moment later, Dad joined us, austere in his good clothes. Dad reserved his good clothes for church on those rare Sunday mornings when he made us go; we’d all pile into the SUV with our hats on, grumbling and protesting.
To my surprise, Jack, the horse master, stood off to the side, waiting with us. He shuffled his feet as the delivery pickup rattled to a stop and Meggy jumped out. She was the woman who delivered our mail once a week—our only connection with the outside world. She was also responsible for transporting travelers to their destinations. Dad had arranged for her to meet our aunt at the train station.
Meggy, a big, capable woman, greeted Dad with her booming voice. “Afternoon, Mr. Rayburn.”
Without waiting for a response, she headed to the back of the vehicle, but Jack darted forward, hefting out the luggage before she got there, quickly producing two large suitcases and three smaller bags.
Meggy hovered while our aunt stepped out of the vehicle. She was a petite woman, slight and fragile. She looked remarkably fresh in a crisp white shirt, dark blue jeans, and heeled leather boots. A gold necklace glittered at her throat and tiny diamond earrings sparkled where her hair was clipped back. I blinked at them, wondering if they were real.
I glanced down at my tattered jeans, swallowing hard.
Alice’s hair was long, straight, and inky black like a polished stone. Her eyes were blue like mine.
She wasn’t alone.
The man who stepped out of the vehicle behind her was tall and wore cargo pants that were crushed but clean, his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows like he expected to get to work immediately. His eyes were the color of eucalyptus leaves, pale and earthy, and his lips were tanned as brown as his skin, as brown as his hair. He scanned his surroundings, including us, his gaze flickering between my aunt and I for a moment.
Jack had finished unloading Alice’s luggage and Dad gave Jack a sharp nod in the direction of the stables. The newcomer grabbed a beat-up duffel bag from the back of the pickup and shook hands with Jack without speaking. Both men strode away behind the house, leaving me to wonder who the man was and why he’d come to our ranch.
I peered after them, but then Dad greeted Alice and one glance at her expression made my s
tomach sink.
Grim. Disappointed.
Her lips turned down even more as she took in each of us.
On my left, Timothy stood straight and tall, but I knew by the set of his broad shoulders that he felt awkward. As a lock of black hair fell into his eyes, I remembered that I’d promised to give him a haircut before Alice arrived so he wouldn’t look so scraggly.
Edith was a picture of endless patience with Samuel beside her, their red hair a striking contrast to mine. Samuel fidgeted with the base of his shirt, his dirty, bare toes scrunched together on the rough veranda boards.
I glanced across at Rebecca who stood close to Timothy. She, at least, seemed relaxed and comfortable in her best dress, but she held one hand over a patch at the side. She’d caught the dress on a barbed wire fence, chasing a cat after church, ripping a hole that nothing could fix.
Alice blinked rapidly as her focus shot from Samuel’s dirty feet to Timothy’s hair to Rebecca’s threadbare dress.
Then she looked at me.
Her expression dropped.
Her eyes widened and her mouth parted. Her sudden shock slammed into me like a physical force before her gaze shot to my father, her eyebrows raised as if she were accusing him of something.
He smiled back at Alice with a cold expression that made my hands and feet turn icy. I had no idea what was going on between them, why my aunt seemed so shocked or why my father seemed to have expected her to react that way.
I tucked my fingers into the back of my shirt, scrunching the material into my fists like I wanted to scrunch the sudden chill riding my skin.
The other me scattered across my thoughts like goose bumps, rising with the cold from my chest while I tried to swallow her down. I imagined her crushed in my fist like the material I held so tightly at the base of my spine.
Without missing a beat, Dad took Alice’s hand and led her forward as if nothing had happened. She clenched her jaw, as though she were swallowing something she didn’t like, and pasted a smile onto her face.